Firstly McGuinness’ death demonstrated that while many had accepted the outcomes of the peace process and shift by McGuinness and Sinn Fein away from the armalite to the ballot box, just as many still saw McGuinness as one of the public faces of Sinn Fein at a time when the Provisional IRA still conducted a campaign of armed struggle. The UK tabloids typified this approach, with the Daily Mail putting pictures of the bombings at Guildford and Enniskillen on its front page, while The Sun blazoned the headline, ‘UNFORGIVEN’. From the varied response to McGuinness’ death, it seems that the memory of ‘The Troubles’, especially the actions of the IRA, has not faded from British consciousness.

A contrast between the UK and Irish tabloids

Secondly in the wake of the attack at Westminster on Wednesday, a meme has been circulated online that suggests that even though the IRA planted bombs in London, the Irish population at large in Britain were not persecuted and that the British public ‘knew’ that any IRA bombings were the result of a few individuals. The intent of this meme is to argue that the British should not blame the Muslim community for the attack at Westminster and realise that it was the actions of a small minority. However this ignores the fact that the Irish community in Britain faced heavy discrimination in the 1970s and 1980s and were heavily policed in the wake of Republican attacks, such as the Guildford and Birmingham bombings in 1974.

The offending tweet.

As I have written elsewhere, after these two attacks in late 1974, the Labour government quickly introduced the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974. The Prevention of Terrorism Act gave the police and the security services wide-ranging powers of arrest and detention to counter terrorism extending from Northern Ireland, including arrest without warrant, detention without charge for up to five days and exclusion of people travelling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. These powers were further extended in 1976, 1984 and 1989. The authorities used these Acts to intimidate the Irish community in Britain and their over-zealousness resulted in a number of wrongful convictions, such as the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Alongside these wrongful convictions, many would have suffered wrongful arrest or detention, or police harassment that have gone unrecorded. It could be argued that the Irish population in Britain was considered a ‘suspect community’.

The Birmingham Six at the time of their arrest.

The notion of the ‘suspect community’ was first developed by Paddy Hillyard in the early 1990s to describe the suspicion placed upon the entire Irish community in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s by the Prevention of Terrorism Acts. Hillyard argued that the Prevention of Terrorism legislation had, in practice, placed the Irish communists under suspicion ‘because they are Irish’, rather than a specific offence – because ‘they belong[ed] to a suspect community’. This form of ‘institutionalised racism’ was based on pressuring the Irish community into providing information on others within the same community and placing everyone within the minority community under suspicion. Hillyard explained:

To begin with, it appears to be commonplace for the police to try and pick up anyone who is related to, is friends with or has been connected with – however tenuously – someone who is suspected of a serious crime or has been charged with one. After this group has been arrested and interrogated, the police then focus on people related to, or connected with them, and the process continues. This pyramid method of police investigation draws into the net a wide range of people and the main thread which links them all is the fact that most are Irish or are married to someone who is Irish.

The concept of the ‘suspect community’ is not limited to describing the methods of policing enforced upon a certain community grouping, but also encompasses how formal public suspicion by the authorities could be transferred to a public suspicion. Hillyard claimed that the public ‘played an important role in the construction of suspicion’ and in the case of the Irish community, this had resulted in ‘some [non-Irish] members of the public… report[ing] an Irish person’s presence to the police.’ This suspicion was reinforced by the press which promoted ‘the view that all Irish people are suspect.’

In the twenty-first century, scholars have used the concept of the ‘suspect community’ to describe how Britain’s Muslim communities have been perceived in the era of the ‘war on terror’. It has been employed to show the continuities in British national security policy and how this affects perceptions of minority communities by broader civil society. Christina Pantazis and Simon Pemberton define the ‘suspect community’ as:

a sub-group of the population that is singled out for state attention as being ‘problematic’. Specifically in terms of policing, individuals may be targeted, not necessarily as a result of suspected wrong doing, but simply because of their presumed membership to that sub-group.

Even though there are differences in how the Irish were treated in the past and how Muslims are treated in the present with regards to counter-terrorism and national security, but there are also continuities. Making anti-racist statements against the racist backlash faced by Britain’s Muslim communities does not need to erase the discriminatory treatment faced by Britain’s Irish communities a few decades ago. The reaction to the death of leading Republican Martin McGuinness, who renounced the armed struggle and embraced parliamentary politics, shows that the memory of Irish Republican violence has not gone away, but at the same time, we need to remember how the majority of Irish people in Britain were treated (and how they felt) in the wake of this violence.

On ‘Harmony Day’ yesterday, the Turnbull government announced that it would seek to introduce legislation that would amend the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) to remove the words ‘insult’ or ‘offend’ from section 18c of the Act. Under these proposed changes, only racial ‘harassment’ or ‘intimidation’ would be prohibited.

To many, this seemed like a pet project of the conservative right of the Liberal Party and some right libertarians that had gained too much attention. A number of commentators pointed to the continued discussion of the s18c in the opinion pages of The Australian, as well as the columns of News Limited commentators like Andrew Bolt or the journal Quadrant. The amount of media space devoted to criticising s18c and the Australian Human Rights Commission (who enforce the Racial Discrimination Act) seems to most to be out of proportion with mainstream public opinion in Australia.

In response to yesterday’s announcement, Fatima Measham from the current affairs website Eureka Street commented:

one thing I really enjoy recalling is that RDA laws only became a thing after Indigenous people won a federal court case against Bolt

With Andrew Bolt regarded as a close personal friend, Prime Minister Tony Abbott first floated changing the Act in 2014, but with significant resistance from ethnic minority organisations and other progressive groups, Abbott dropped this initiative.

But the issue didn’t go away. The Australian continued to campaign for the working of s18c to be changed. So did some within the Liberal Party, such as Senator Cory Bernardi, or Abbott once he returned to the backbench. And since Turnbull’s rapid decline in the opinion polls, the conservative right have been using the issue to criticise Turnbull and assert themselves, despite their numerical sparsity.

Using Parlinfo, I looked into how often had the issue been raised in Parliament since s18c came into effect in 1995, as part of the amendments to 1975 Act instigated by the Racial Hatred Act 1995 (Cth). And here are the results:

HoR

Senate

1994

7

1

1995

0

2

1996

1

0

1997

0

0

1998

0

0

1999

0

0

2000

0

0

2001

0

0

2002

0

0

2003

0

0

2004

0

0

2005

0

0

2006

0

0

2007

0

0

2008

0

0

2009

0

0

2010

2

0

2011

0

0

2012

3

3

2013

8

2

2014

40

58

2015

33

20

2016

38

59

2017

58

20

As the above table shows, despite from an initial flurry in the mid-1990s (when the Racial Hatred Bill/Act was debated and passed), it was not until 2014 that the issue really becomes a topic of discussion in parliament. Discussions of the subject went down significantly in 2015, after Abbott dropped the issue, but was revived the following year, especially in the Senate – now home to a number of Senators on the political far right. The below graphic also illustrates the sudden rise in discussion of the issue since the Liberals have regained office.

Even though the Racial Hatred Act was passed more than 20 years ago and s18c has been part of the Racial Discrimination Act framework since then, it was only in recent years that conservatives and right libertarians have taken up the issue. This is demonstrated by the discussion of the issue in Parliament.

A much broader analysis of how and how much the issue has been discussed in the media is needed, but that’s for another time.

After Oswald Mosley, William Joyce (infamously known as Lord Haw-Haw) is probably the most well-known British fascist of the inter-war period. A leading member of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), Joyce was forced from the party in 1937 and after passing through a series of pro-German groups and societies in the lead up to the war, fled to Berlin in the days before the Second World War started. Joyce joined a small bunch of English-speakers in Nazi Germany who worked for Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, who broadcast pro-Nazi material over the airwaves and wrote similar tracts for distribution in German POW camps and elsewhere. As the deftest of these propagandists, Joyce became known as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ to British listeners, who remained unaware of Joyce’s real identity (although several MI5 staff suspected that he was Haw-Haw). Captured by British soldiers trying to escape Germany at the end of the war, Joyce was repatriated to Britain to stand trial for treason. Despite having an American birth certificate (and hence US citizenship), Joyce was found to betrayed his allegiance to the British Crown and was hanged in early 1946.

Although there have been studies of Joyce’s life before, Colin Holmes, an expert historian on anti-Semitism in modern Britain, has undertaken considerable new research to bring a more well-rounded picture of Joyce and his motivations, both personal and political. Born in the United States, his family traveled to County Galway when he was a child and was a pro-Unionist protestant throughout his youth. Despite Holmes’ diligent research, there are aspects of Joyce’s life in Ireland that are unknown and the first chapter is possibly the weaker section of the biography. However his recruitment as an informant for the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence and the battles he had with local Irish Republicans, explored in detail by Holmes, is important, because it shapes his future political outlook – fiercely pro-British, a believer in British imperialism and willing to be involved in political violence.

Moving to England in the 1920s, Joyce fancied himself as an academic and tried to pursue a career in English literary studies, while at the same time joining the Conservative Party. Soon Joyce found the Tories too timid and became involved the British Fascisti formed by the eccentric Rotha Lintorn-Orman. Joyce and future Imperial Fascist League leader Arnold Leese both joined a splinter party from the BF called the National Fascisti before Leese formed the Imperial Fascist League in 1929 and Joyce joined the BUF in 1932. One of the interesting things about Joyce for historians is that his journey on the right hand side of politics saw him travel through almost every organisation on the far right and Holmes does a great job to explore the various small and sinister organisations that Joyce encountered in both the 1920s and 1930s.

Joyce did not join Oswald Mosley’s New Party, but was an early member of the BUF, formed in late 1932 after Mosley travelled to the continent to witness Italian fascism in person. Joyce soon found himself in a leading position within the BUF and was known as a confident, yet vitriolic, public speaker. Holmes shows that Joyce gained considerable influence within the BUF during his tenure, but as his star rose, his relationship with Mosley soured and was eventually excluded from the BUF in early 1937.

From the time that he was kicked out of the BUF until his leaving for Germany in August 1939, Joyce, again, was involved in a number of organisations on the British far right and who pushed for stronger links between Britain and Germany. As well as the National Socialist League that he founded with fellow ex-BUFers John Beckett and John MacNab, Joyce was also associated with the Nordic League, the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Right Club. Despite a small number of wealthy benefactors, Holmes shows that Joyce was always looking for sources of income for his political ventures and his associations with many of those who pro-German were as economically motivated as they were political. Holmes also shows that MI5 had penetrated deeply into these circles by the late 1930s, although they were unable to detain Joyce before he fled to Germany in the month before the war.

Joyce and his wife moved to Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War, using his British passport to leave the country, but not becoming a German citizen until after the war started. For several months in the early days of the war, Joyce assisted the Nazis while holding a British passport, even though he was born in the United States, and was later to be a naturalised German. This is an important detail which becomes relevant at this 1945 trial. Holmes emphasises the irony of the extreme British patriot having to renounce his British citizenship and pledge allegiance to a foreign power during the time of war.

While in Germany, Joyce worked for Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry and while also authoring works on Germany’s future triumph over Western Europe and the bankruptcy of modern Britain, he was most well-known for broadcasting Nazi propaganda in English. Although he was not the first Lord Haw-Haw, a pseudonym used by several different broadcasters, Joyce came to personify the character. Looking at the effect that Lord Haw-Haw’s broadcasts had upon British morale during the war, Holmes uses Mass Observation records to show that while many British listeners dismissed Lord Haw-Haw’s ravings and thought of him as foolish, others were perturbed by his message, particularly as these broadcast often included information about Allied losses not covered in the British media. The book also shows that from the very beginning, the security services were also listening to Lord Haw-Haw and had been informed by several contacts that the voice of Haw-Haw was indeed Joyce.

Holmes depicts how Joyce, who desired attention and praise from his German employers, was given favourable treatment in the early years of the war, but as the war dragged on, this favourable treatment dried up and Joyce started to resent living in a country where wartime restrictions were so harshly felt. Increasingly plagued by alcoholism and abusive towards his wife, Joyce raged against his situation. As the Soviets got closer to Berlin, Joyce and his wife fled westwards and Joyce was eventually captured near the German-Danish border in late May 1945 by British soldiers, who shot him in the buttocks during a quick scuffle. Injured, he was taken back to Britain and within a few months was to be put on trial for treason.

The prosecution of Joyce was complex as it hinged upon the fact that Joyce, although an American citizen by birth, had travelled to Germany on a British passport and from the outbreak of the war until July 1940 (when he and his wife became naturalised German citizens) had broadcast at the behest of the Nazi regime, who were at war with Britain. Holding a British passport implied allegiance to the British Crown and by working for the Nazis while holding this passport, the prosecution argued, Joyce committed treason. Joyce was convinced that his American birth certificate would save him, as it had Eamon de Valera who was pardoned for treason after the 1916 Easter Rising.

Holmes navigates the intricate legal arguments put forward by both the prosecution and defence, though both the initial trail and the appeal. The reader is left with the impression that the successful prosecution and the upholding of the guilty verdict was a controversial interpretation of the law as it stood, with a suggestion that it was unlikely that Joyce would be ever be found not guilty. Once the guilty verdict was upheld in December 1945, execution was quick to follow and in early January 1946, Joyce was hung at Wandsworth Prison in London. Joyce seemed to have accepted his fate and according to Holmes, showed little regret for his political views and where they had led him since the 1920s.

Colin Holmes has done more than write a biography of Joyce, with a book that also explores the social history of the British far right in the inter-war period, outlines the intrigues of the British security services during this era and delves into the legal history surrounding Joyce’s trial for treason. It is an enjoyable read that uses the life of Joyce to traverse down a number of historical paths, tying together several fields of historical scholarship. Overall an ambitious, yet very accomplished, book.

It is 20 years since the debut of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a show that has generated much academic and fan-generated writing, I thought I would post this piece that I wrote for All Slay zine back in 2003. So Scooby Gang fans, enjoy!

There has been much analysis and debate over the story arcs of Buffy. As the show developed, the series arcs became longer and longer, so much so that pretty much all of season 6 and 7 progressed the story arcs. On the other hand, some of my favourite episodes are the stand alone episodes. These episodes don’t further the story arc much, or even at all, but still provide come of the best Buffy moments. So I digress into the world of the Top Ten Stand Alone Episodes…

BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED (Season 2, Episode 16)

Synopsis: After being dumped by Cordelia on Valentine’s Day, Xander blackmails Amy into performing a love spell. The spell backfires when Xander becomes every woman in Sunnydale’s ‘cuddle monkey’, except for Cordelia. This results in an obsessive mob chasing Xander and Cordelia into Buffy’s basement. The episode resolves with Cordelia rejecting the sheep mentality of the ‘Cordettes’ and choosing to date Xander, ‘no matter how lame he is’.

Why It Works: Like many of the humorous stand alone episodes, Xander stands as the main character of the episode and it is the second time he’s been rejected by a girl in two seasons. The episode starts off slowly and there is suspicion that it might revolve around Angel’s dangerous new obsession with Buffy, but when Buffy and Amy both start flirting with Xander, the fun begins. The soundtrack of ‘Dr. Love’ works a treat and the interaction of the infuriated Giles, the love-stricken Jenny and poor, hopeless Xander is hilarious. Around the ‘Cordettes’, Cordelia’s acid tongue is at its sharpest, but the episode’s conclusion keeps the show’s continuity and provides the basis for almost a season’s worth of laughs.

Quotablest Quote:Xander: “Do you know what’s a good day to break up with somebody? Any day besides Valentine’s Day! I mean, what, were you running low on dramatic irony?”

GO FISH (Season 2, Episode 20)

Synopsis: The Sunnydale High swim team is winning competitions, but also seem to be losing their skin. The Scooby Gang investigate and find the swim team are taking steroids that have the unfortunate side effect of turning them into sea monsters. Xander’s undercover work lands him in danger, resulting in blood transfusion and the excitement of Willow and Cordelia.

Why It Works: An episode full of red herrings, but also full of one-liners. This was David Fury’s first episode for Buffy and is an indication of the humour present in his later episodes. Xander and Cordelia comes through with the funnies again, both taking a side on the issue of the swim team and its various privileges. Of course, Cordelia’s pro and Xander’s con – until he joins the team. A very light episode in between ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ and the season end ‘Becoming’, but very enjoyable.

Quotablest Quote:Xander: And what about that nutty ‘all men are created equal’ thing?Cordelia: Propaganda spouted out by the ugly and less deserving.Xander: I think that was Lincoln.Cordelia: Disgusting mole and stupid hat.Willow: Actually, it was Jefferson.Cordelia: Kept slaves. Remember?

BAND CANDY (Season 3, Episode 6)

Synopsis: The Mayor and Mr Trick hire bad guy Ethan Rayne to distract the population of Sunnydale while they prepare a sacrifice for a demon named Lagos. Rayne uses cursed candy bars, sold by the Sunnydale High students to raise money for the band, which turn the adults into teenagers. Giles and Joyce are both affected and although this pleases Buffy at first, it ultimately results in her disapproval.

Why It Works: This episode works principally because the characters’ nuances, well known by this time, change drastically. Although Joyce comes off partially as annoying and whiny, Giles’ reversion to a rebellious cockney and Principal Snyder’s nerdish tendencies make this episode very entertaining. The Scooby Gang play most of this episode straight, even Xander, but the comical performances by the adults are fantastic, especially where Giles and Joyce argue with the ‘mature’ Buffy.

Synopsis: It’s the end of the world again and the Scooby Gang must assemble for the fight – except Xander. Sidelined for the showdown, Xander borrows his uncle’s car and after a riling from Cordelia, befriends a group of zombie teenagers. While they plan to ‘bake a cake’, Xander is seduced by Faith, before saving the school from exploding.

Why It Works: Like ‘Band Candy’, the humour from this episode lies in its self-referential parodies. Instead of the overly dramatic apocalypse scenario, Xander’s adventure for acceptance and identity is the main storyline. He goes from scene to scene, trying to fit in, but ultimately finds that instead of trying to be someone else, such as ‘Car Guy’, he’s better off being himself. His seduction by Faith is classic comedy and satire of the usual Buffy structure is a great reprieve from the show’s moments of heavy drama, while allowing Xander to find his own place within the Scooby Gang.

Quotablest Quote:Xander: Yeah, great knife. Although I think it may technically be a sword.Jack O’Toole: She’s called Katie.Xander: You gave it a girl’s name. How very serial killer of you.

FEAR ITSELF (Season 4, Episode 4)

Synopsis: Halloween once again provides the Scooby Gang with a predicament. The Frat Party’s haunted house has turned into a real house of horrors, due to Oz’s blood being spilt on an ancient rune. A fear demon is trying to emerge, leading to Buffy being dragged into a basement of zombies, Xander turning invisible, Willow’s magic going awry and Oz changing into his werewolf state. Eventually Anya and Giles rescue the gang, before Buffy stomps the miniscule fear demon.

Why It Works: Although the episode is surprisingly similar to Season One’s ‘Nightmares’ with hints of Season Two’s ‘Halloween’, ‘Fear Itself’ is very good episode. Much of the laughs come from the incidents outside of the haunted house, such as Giles’ ridiculous sombrero and dancing skeleton or Xander and Anya’s interaction. Finally, the appearance of the miniature fear demon and Xander’s taunting conclude an enjoyable Halloween romp. Also notable for the first mention of Anya’s fear of bunnies.

Synopsis: Jonathan is a world-class superhero, worshipped by all, with Buffy as his sidekick. When a demon arrives that Jonathan is reluctant to fight, Buffy realises something is amiss. With the help of Anya, Buffy discovers that Jonathan has created an alternate reality, which spawned the monster. By Buffy eventually killing the monster, the alternate world Jonathan created disappears, but the advice he gives Buffy and Riley about the Faith incident remains.

Why It Works: ‘Superstar’ removes Buffy as the central character of the show and gives her a secondary role alongside the diminutive Jonathan. As well as Buffy’s venture from the ‘normal’ to resuming her role as the Gang’s leader, the episode’s humour comes from the over-the-top hero worship of Jonathan. Giles’ Jonathan swimsuit calendar and his apprehension in admitting to owning it is perhaps one of the best Giles’ moments ever. Also very enjoyable is the altered opening sequence with Jonathan being very James Bond.

Quotablest Quote:Buffy: Anya, tell them about the alternate universes.Anya: Oh, okay. Um… say you really like shrimp a lot. Or we could say you don’t like shrimp at all. “Blah, I wish there weren’t any shrimp,” you’d say to yourself…Buffy: Stop! You’re saying it wrong.

THE REPLACEMENT (Season 5, Episode 3)

Synopsis: A sophisticated demon named Toth aims to separate Buffy into two different bodies, but happens to separate Xander instead. One Xander is smooth and confident, the other is clumsy and self-loathing, but both believe the other is a demon, or an evil robot. Giles ascertains that both are the ‘real’ Xander and they need each other to survive. Before the two Xanders kill each other, the Gang intervenes and Willow reunites them, despite Anya’s interest in kinky sex games.

Why It Works: By the end of Season Five, all three members of the Scooby Gang have had a doppelganger, but the fact that there’s two Xanders makes this episode exceptionally funny. Xander at his most downtrodden and self-loathing is always going to be hilarious and he is. Smooth Xander is also quite funny, especially when he confronts the Lame Xander. Riley has a rare comedic line, as well ass some classic lines from Buffy and Giles. The scene where Lame Xander tries to convince Willow that he’s the ‘real’ Xander is damn well amusing, and you have to love the Snoopy dance. Additionally, some think that Anya’s nightgown is overtly comical.

Quotablest Quote:Lame Xander: It’s a robot. It’s an evil robot constructed from evil parts that look like me designed to do evil.

TRIANGLE (Season 5, Episode 11)

Synopsis: While Giles flies to England to gather more information on Glory, Anya (and Willow) is left in charge of the Magic Box. When Anya disapproves of Willow and Tara’s experimentation with spells, they both turn to Xander, who decides to escape their bickering. Left alone to sort things out, Willow and Anya release Olaf the Troll from a bottle that had imprisoned him. Olaf then goes on a destruction spree, ending up at the Bronze where the gang find out that Olaf is indeed Anya’s ex-boyfriend and she had turned him into the troll. Xander fights Olaf and is rewarded with the ‘insane troll logic’ of having to decide between Anya or Willow’s life being spared. However, a distraught Buffy beats Olaf before Willow sends him to another dimension.

Why It Works: Olaf as a mediaeval troll is one of the best characters that the show has created and his altercation with Xander and Spike over ‘plump succulent babies’ and ‘much hearty grog’ is such cheesy dialogue that is also hilarious. However, ‘Triangle’ is all about Anya and her humorous speech. In the previous episode ‘Into The Woods’, Willow took Anya to task about her speech and now the two are at each other throats, but the results are damn funny. Despite the hilarity of Willow and Anya, it is also pleasing to see the two resolve their differences by the episode’s conclusion. Also, this is the first episode for over a season without Riley. Much rejoicing was had.

Quotablest Quote:Willow (imitating Anya): I like money better than people. People can so rarely be exchanged for goods and/or services!Anya: Xander, she’s pretending to be me!

TABULA RASA (Season 6, Episode 8)

Synopsis: Xander, Anya, Willow and Tara have learnt that Buffy was in heaven and Willow proposes magic to make Buffy forget. Tara gives Willow an ultimatum to stop using magic. Meanwhile Giles tells Buffy that he is leaving for London. All of the Gang, plus Spike gather at the Magic Box, but succumb to a mind control spell by Willow that goes horribly wrong. The Gang lose their memories and try to figure out who they are and what they are doing. However they are interrupted by a literal ‘loan shark’ and his vampire hoods. The Gang eventually regain their memories and Tara breaks up with Willow.

Why It Works: Again, the humour of this episode arises from the characters’ performing in a totally different way than their usual self. The piecing together of the puzzle and their incorrect assumptions make for amusing viewing. Spike’s realisation that he is a vampire and his parody of the ‘Angel’ spiel is particularly good, but once again the prize goes to Anya and Giles for their routine as a married couple – although one does wonder why Anya remembers her fear of bunnies.

Quotablest Quote:Buffy: I’ll name me, Joan.Dawn: Ugh!Buffy: Did you just ‘ugh’ my name?

HIM (Season 7, Episode 8)

Synopsis: Dawn is head over heels for RJ, the handsome quarterback of Sunnydale High. She starts to obsess about him, even trying out for the cheerleading squad. Only she isn’t the only one after RJ. Soon, every girl who comes into contact with RJ falls under his charm. Buffy, Dawn, Willow and Anya all attempt to show their love for RJ. Xander and Spike realise that the girls are under a love spell, triggered by RJ’s jacket. Before destroying the jacket, they save Buffy from firing a rocket launcher the Principal Wood, Willow from performing a spell and Dawn from being run over by a train. However, Anya’s crime spree goes unprevented, yet unnoticed.

Why It Works: As we saw in ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’, love spells make for humorous watching. Dawn’s cheerleader try out is very amusing, yet totally cringe worthy. There are loads of nerd-ish references to past episodes, which make fan boys (and girls) smile with glee. Just before the very serious story arc on Season Seven, ‘Him’ is totally light hearted and fun. The scene from Principal wood’s window where Spike and Xander take out Buffy before she fires the rocket launcher is priceless.

Quoteablest Quote:Buffy: “Willow, you’re a gay woman! And he… isn’t.”Willow: “This isn’t about his physical presence! It’s about his heart.”Anya: “His physical presence has a penis!”

In the volume of the official history of ASIO that deals with what Greg Langley has described as the ‘decade of dissent’, 1965 to 1975,[1] there is one mention of the women’s liberation movement and ASIO’s surveillance of it. In his volume, John Blaxland lists the women’s liberation movement as just one of the social movements that was monitored by ASIO during the late 1960s and early 1970s, alongside the peace movement, and the movement for Aboriginal rights.[2] Blaxland does not go beyond this mention, but we know from other autobiographical works on the material history of ASIO, such as Anne Summers’ chapter in the Meredith Burgmann’s Dirty Secrets anthology,[3] that the security services did extensively monitor feminists and the women’s liberation movement during this period.

Unlike the National Archives in London, the National Archives of Australia have been very forthcoming in releasing ASIO files from the 1960s through to the early 1980s, particularly due to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by people who were subject to ASIO surveillance, as well as by a small number of interested journalists and academics. Although, as Tim Sherratt has written,[4] the publicly available ASIO files often have the most controversial elements still redacted, while more sensitive files are retained by the government. Still the amount of material that has been released has been highly useful for contemporary historians.

Most of the publicly available ASIO files on the women’s liberation movement have been digitised and cover the period from 1970 to 1980. As well as four national files (which are the papers that I have explored), there are a number of files dedicated the movements in New South Wales (9), Victoria (4) and the Australian Capital Territory (2). There are probably more files dedicated to the movements in the other states and territories, but some files on South Australia and Tasmania are incorporated into the national files.

ASIO were not the only branch of the state to be involved in the monitoring of the women’s liberation movement. The Special Branches of each state police force were involved in the surveillance of feminist activists across Australia, with Margaret Henderson and Alexandra Winter revealing the in-depth monitoring of socialist feminist Carole Ferrier by the Queensland Special Branch between 1975 and 1989.[5] The Special Branch files in most states have been destroyed (or are deemed not locatable),[6] with only glimpses of the work of these Special Branches being seen in their correspondence with ASIO maintained in the released ASIO files (one exception to this being the papers of the South Australian Special Branch made public during the inquiry by Justice White into the Special Branch’s security records in 1977).[7]

As Henderson and Winter, as well as Jon Piccini,[8] have noted in their research into ASIO and Special Branch files, while these files give us a detailed record of events, they also present a narrative of activism as determined by the surveiller and not by the subject of the surveillance. Their actions are deemed noteworthy if they fit in with ‘paranoid’ outlook of the security services, who were trained to see potential threats from a multitude of otherwise innocuous sources. As much as we see the behaviour of the activist in these files, we also see the thinking underpinning the actions of the state, who were much more readily to believe that many independent actors were part of a wider conspiracy against the established political and social order in Australia at the time.

The ASIO files on the women’s liberation movement assembled at the national level begin in early 1970. This provides evidence of three main motivations for surveillance of the movement. Firstly, the file contains plenty of clippings on the women’s liberation movement in the United States and their radicalism, and, as Ruth Rosen has shown, the FBI showed great interest in these feminist activists for a variety of reasons. This suspicion was transferred from the US to Australia, as Australian women started to read Kate Millet, Betty Friedan and other US feminist writers. Secondly, the files also note the beginning of various Women’s Liberation Groups formed in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra in 1969-70, who are in communication with each other and looking to organise on a national scale, with the Sydney group coming first and then others taking inspiration in the other cities. Thirdly, ASIO were already heavily monitoring the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the Trotskyist Socialist Youth Alliance (SYA) and it is from these two groups that many of the more militant socialist feminists emerged.

CPA feminist Olga Silver selling ‘Tribune’

Both the CPA and SYA were involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and the wider cultural radicalism of the era and tried to organise around the issue of women’s liberation, both within their party structures and within broader activist circles. In the fourteen years since 1956, the CPA had undergone a significant change from a very pro-Stalin and pro-Chinese militant party to a proto-Eurocommunist party that sought to embrace the new social movements that arose in the 1960s. As Margaret Penson has shown, under the new leadership of Laurie Aarons, the CPA started to take the idea of women’s liberation seriously and several women party members were involved in organising around the issue, with a national conference on women held by the CPA in 1970.[9] At the same time, those within the Party who eschewed these social movements (and held a more pro-Soviet viewpoint) started to agitate against the Aarons leadership and eventually broke away in 1971 to become the Socialist Party of Australia (SPA).

The SYA were a Trotskyist group that emerged out of the anti-war movement at Sydney University, influenced by the US Socialist Workers Party and the Mandelite Fourth International, including the British International Marxist Group. Critical of the Communist Party’s ‘Stalinism’, the SYA emphasised its anti-imperial solidarity work, including the establishment of the Third World Bookshop in Sydney, which became an organisational hub for the SYA (but also bugged by ASIO).

A 1971 report on the Women’s Liberation Trade Union Conference, organised by the CPA’s Aileen Beaver, explicitly outlined the ASIO’s interest in the women’s liberation movement in Australia:

Over the past months the Women’s Liberation Movement has been gaining increasing support… and many of the Groups appear to be dominated by Communist Party of Australia (CPAS) members, eg, the Working Women’s Women’s Liberation Group in Sydney or by Maoists eg, the Worker Student Alliance Women’s Liberation Group in Melbourne or by Trotskyists eg, Sydney Bread and Roses Women’s Liberation Group. It is for this reason that ASIO is maintaining an interest in the Women’s Liberation Movement. (my emphasis)[10]

Much of ASIO’s surveillance of the women’s liberation movement came from its surveillance of the Communist Party and the Socialist Youth Alliance, through the bugging of the CPA and SYA offices, and reports by agents at meetings and conferences. As David Lockwood has noted, these ASIO files often observed the mundane every-day activities of those involved in progressive and left-wing politics. Page after page is filled with short memos outlining particular people of interest, their links to other people and organisations under surveillance and often with a short description of the person. With the case of feminist activists, these candid remarks by ASIO agents reveal the sexist contempt that they had for the women’s liberation movement at the time. For example, a memo on Isabelle Sandford (also known as ‘Coonie’) stated:

Coonie is approximately 23 years of age, approximately 5’2” tall, with shoulder length straight dark brown hair. She has brown eyes, weights approximately 8 stone. She has a good figure, is neat and well groomed. She is not popular with the other members of the Women’s Liberation Group as they consider she talks a lot of rot, and has in fact been accused on occasions of being a liar.[11]

Another memo on Elisabeth Elliott seemed to complain that while she was considered ‘a very attractive girl’, she was deemed to be ‘untidy in her general appearance’.[12]

The CPA had overseen the establishment of the Union of Australian Women (UAW) in the 1950s, but by the early 1970s, it was being taken over by the Women’s Liberation Groups which involved both CPA and SYA members. One report from November 1970 noted ‘a lot of bickering’ at a South District branch meeting over whether the UAW was still the ‘main CPA women’s organisation’,[13] with dissidents (who would eventually form the SPA) allegedly pressing for the traditional organisation to maintain its role. In March 1971, ASIO further noted that future SPA leading figure Pat Clancy:

spoke disparagingly of the CPA leadership’s attitude of concentrating on Women’s Liberation as he feels that the potential of Women’s Liberation is minor compared to the possibility of organising women in the industrial area.[14]

The CPA maintained its support for women’s liberation movement and published a pamphlet in 1971 titled, What Every Woman Should Know, under the guise of the Women’s Liberation Working Women’s Group. An ASIO intercept report noted that the CPA sold out its initial run of the pamphlet and that hundreds of copies were to be sent to CPA bookshops in Melbourne and Perth.[15] In July 1972, ASIO still saw the CPA as ‘the best appointed Women’s Liberation’ group, but noted that ‘even within it there is quite strong opposition from many of the men’.[16] An agent’s briefing from 1972 National Congress of the CPA noted that one male Communist Party member spoke out against women’s liberation at the Congress, reporting:

He was very much against the part of Women’s Liberation where they were men hating. He felt that this was a bad attitude which could do nothing but harm to the organisation.[17]

As Steve James has written, the primary function of ASIO was intelligence gathering,[18] but one wonders about what use the information gathered by ASIO agents would be. For example, after a Women’s Liberation Conference held in Guthega in NSW in January 1972 by a faction within the SYA, a brief called for the following from any agents or informants attending the conference:

Identification of persons attending the Conference with particular reference to their political leanings…

Information concerning the reported split within the Socialist Youth Alliance over the issues of Women’s Liberation.

Information concerning a possible split in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Sydney following the formation of the New Communist Party (Socialist Party of Australia).[19]

The first three national files are dedicated to the years from 1970 to 1972, but the last file covers the years from 1972 to 1980, suggesting a reduction in interest from ASIO, particularly in relation to the links between the Communist Party and the Socialist Youth Alliance to the women’s liberation movement, which was, as quoted above, the main reason for ASIO’s surveillance of the movement. This neatly coincides with the election of the Whitlam government in December 1972 and the reform of ASIO after the raid ordered by Attorney-General Lionel Murphy in early 1973.

However surveillance did not stop entirely in this period and it seems that ASIO seemed to shift their focus of concern from the women’s liberation movement being a political concern with regards to Communist and Trotskyist entrism to a concern about the impact that the movement was having socially and culturally. One document drafted in November 1972, just before the election of Whitlam, argued explicitly that the women’s liberation movement was ‘a subversive movement… in a unique manner.’[20] Firstly, the report acknowledged, as had been ASIO thinking over the last few years, that the women’s liberation movement was ‘a target movement… for communist action organisations.’[21] The report expanded on this, stating:

This feature of Women’s Liberation, by itself, would make Women’s Liberation of security interest as the expressed aim of the communists is to capture, control, exploit every critical, reformist movement or organisation and develop it into a new revolutionary context.[22]

But this communist infiltration was not the only concern of ASIO. The same report purported:

Women’s Liberation… is not directly concerned with political subversion but is concerned with subversion on a higher and more sophisticated level, (that is social subversion, into which political subversion is incorporated).[23]

This suggested that certain people within the security services believed that the women’s liberation movement were actively undermining the moral fabric of Australian society in the 1970s. The report outlined at length the ways in which this moral subversion alleged manifested itself, including through the degradation of the education system, reconfiguration of sex values and conduct, promotion of drug use, rejection of traditional social values, and undermining of traditional understandings of ‘democracy’.

ASIO outlines the ‘subversive’ agenda of the WLM in Australia (1972)

‘Because of its relentless critique of the existing social order, and the unique nature of its critique,’ ASIO stated, the women’s liberation movement was ‘a fertile field for communist activity’.[24] The report continued…

Women’s Liberation is engaged in the same process of dismantling existing institutions that the communists engage in AFTER the revolution (and, of course, continuously attempt). The communists are delighted to have a ‘captive audience’ which can be mobilised against the capitalist system…

From the Women’s Liberation social analysis, then, it is a short step to the communist analysis of political and social power in capitalist societies.[25]

However as the 1970s progressed, the focus of ASIO on communist entrism in the Women’s Liberation Movement shifted to other parties than the CPA and the SYA (which had become Socialist Workers League after 1972). Between 1972 and 1975, ASIO noted the increased interest in the Women’s Liberation Movement from the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). The aforementioned report from November 1972 noted that the CPA(M-L) held the line that women should organise inside the Communist Party as ‘Marxism-Leninism is the only correct theory on this question.’[26] Two memos from 1975 reveal that some within the SPA, who were originally sceptical of the Women’s Liberation Movement’, argued that the Party ‘must associate with groups such as Women’s Liberation and the Women’s Electoral Lobby because in these groups is where the progressive people are.’[27] Geoff Curthoys was quoted as saying that ‘the S.P.A. must not sever connections with these groups’.[28] Freda Brown reportedly agreed with Curthoys, but stated that ‘the S.P.A. has not got the women’s forces’ to work with these groups.[29]

By 1980, the focus had moved the Australian branch of the Spartacist League, a highly sectarian orthodox Trotskyist group that had grown from the US and UK in the late 1970s. A memo from June 1980 commented that the Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand were ‘active in two main groups… the Gay Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement as a whole, not in individual groups within the movements’, with the Women’s Action Committee identified as the group that the Spartacists were ‘specifically interested in’.[30] In one document from 1980, ASIO outlined the strategy of the Spartacists to acquire members, remarking ‘[i]t is a very long slow process but they gradually draw people away from groups like Gay Liberation and Women’s Rights’.[31] However a document from 1977 had already noted that the Women’s Liberation Movement had already expelled a number of Spartacist League members.[32]

From ‘Australian Spartacist’, May 1980.

The current batch of files run out in 1980, but the last file of the series demonstrates that ASIO’s interest in the Women’s Liberation Movement had greatly waned by the late 1970s. Over the preceding decade, the movement had moved from the extra-parliamentary sphere to the heart of parliamentary politics and policy, as evidenced, for example, by the appointment of Elizabeth Reid as the first Advisor on Women’s Affairs by Gough Whitlam in 1973. The role that the far left played in Australian politics had also waned after the upturn in radicalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We know that surveillance of the far left and other social movements continued into the 1980s, but the files relating to the Women’s Liberation Movement do not continue into Hawke era.

[1] Greg Langley, A Decade of Dissent: Vietnam and the Conflict on the Australian Homefront, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992).

[6] Andrew Moore, ‘“A Secret Policeman’s Lot”: The Working Life of Fred Longbottom of the New South Wales Special Branch’, in John Shields (ed), All Our Labours:Oral Histories of Working Life in Twentieth Century Sydney (Kensington: UNSW Press, 1992) pp. 193-226; Mark Finnane, ‘Long Gone, But Not Forgotten’, Griffith Review, 21 (2008) https://griffithreview.com/articles/long-gone-but-not-forgotten/ (accessed 7 March 2017).

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